This blogpost summarizes some of the main points from the book titled “Love + Work”, by Marcus Buckingham

Signs of Love

World is ever eager to fill our lives with things that it might deem necessary. World here refers to a broad range of entities; schools, colleges, universities, parents, colleagues, bosses, companies, societies etc. We might choose to spend our lives on activities based on external forces and realize at the end of it all, that we have merely survived in this world. We might have never related to work at a deeper level. Well, there are of course people who find purpose, meaning and joy in whatever activities they are up to. But that’s probably not the majority of us. Take a random sample of people around you, you will see that the reason they do a specific type of work is more to do with external environment rather than something they genuinely love doing.

The uniqueness of what you love or loathe is beside the point. Instead you are - from school into the world of work - assessed against a set of models. You are judged not by how intelligently you have cultivated your unique loves, but by how closely you have matched the models. So, in truth, you won’t just get lost. You will get hidden - and by the very institutions that are supposed to real you.

The author questions the lack of adequate time spent by the systems around us in helping us understand the interplay between love and work. In a sense, he hopes that this book provides a framework to think about love and work.

How does one explore love in various activities, situations, contexts and moments ?

Paying attention to your attention. What are the activities that you are inherently drawn to, unprompted by anyone else ?
Follow your instincts and do not wait for confirmation of your instincts by looking for external manifestation of the signal based on the data points or opinions. The instincts are the first sign of love
Look out for flow. What are the type of activities that you do when you seem to have been lost in it ? What are the activities that you do, in which you are more or less immersed in it and do not realize the time it takes ? Activities where you disappear within them, and time flies by. These are red threads. Your life - at school, home, work - is composed of many threads, many different activities, situations, people. Some of these threads are black, white, gray, brown, emotionally meager, a little up, a little down. But some of them are red. Red threads are made of very different material. They appear to be extremely positively charged. You find yourself instinctively wanting to pull these threads. And when you do, your life feels easier, more natural, time rushes by. Love + Skill is a Red thread. Love + No Skill is a Hobby
What clicks ? Whenever you try different kind of roles, keep your feeling alert for when everything just clicks, when you pick up the new skill faster than you should. It’s a sign you have found love. Rapid learning and love, they are linked
Love is in the details. By paying attention to who, why, when, what, how of the activities you love, you get more precise about the situations, the contexts, the details that you really love about something. Unless there is some sort of self reflection of the work you do on a daily basis, it is easy to get lost

The author gives a set of prompts for the reader to reflect upon at regular intervals. He calls them “The Red thread questionnaire”. The question are as follows:

When was the last time

you lost track of time ?
you instinctively volunteered for something ?
someone had to tear you away from what you were doing ?
you felt completely in control of what you were doing ?
you surprised yourself by how well you did?
you were singled out for praise ?
you were the only person to notice ?
you found yourself actively looking forward to work ?
you came up with a new way of doing things ?
you wanted the activity to never end ?

One you have a list of few activities, it is better to reflect on the following, to get more nuanced details about the way you feel

Does it matter who you’re doing it with ?
Does it matter when you do this ?
Does it matter why you’re doing this ?
Does it matter what the focus or the subject is?
Does it matter how you’re doing it ?

I think the most resonant words in the first part of the book are

The only way you will make a lasting contribution in life is to deeply understand what it is that you love. And the inverse: you will never live a life you love unless you deeply understand how to contribute to others. In this sense, the true purpose of your work is to help you discover that which you love: work is for love. And the purpose of love is to help you learn where and how you can contribute: love is for work.

If the above statement is something that you believe, then one can approach one’s life in a completely different way. You do not search for work that you love because you will not know whether you love something unless you try it out. So, in that sense, any work you do, gives you a chance to explore your feelings towards it. Of course this can happen only if you take the time to introspect. If all your doing is moving from one gig to another in search of money, prestige, power, external confirmations, and do not reflect on WHAT you are doing something in the first place and whether it feeds your internal love towards the work, then you are lost in some sense(despite the achievements). However once you start noting down the elements of work that you enjoy, you might start to see a pattern in the type of activities and sub activities that you love.

Also as Oliver Burkeman says we should not chase some productivity hacks to be on top of time. By allowing time to use us, in various activities, we should realize the finitude of our lives. By directly facing finitude in our lives, we will focus on essentials and only then does one encounters joy of missing out. By paying attention and focusing on the red threads instead of all the threads, life becomes that much more richer.

In the past few months, I have been seriously reflecting on the kind of work that I have been doing. I seek out joy in some of the activities that I end up doing on a day to day basis. But there are many activities where I do not see a skin in the game. Since there is no skin in the game, I do not have a chance of any asymmetric payoff that the world might yield. In that sense, I am more inclined to go and look for roles where my contribution is more direct and I can see the payoff immediately. If I was a youngster, may be I would have waited to acquire relevant skills and not get in to instant gratification mode. But given the amount of time I have spent acquiring various skills, I have started to wonder whether all I am doing is clearing the decks on a ship ? Whether all I am doing is to get construction material to a site and never build anything ? Will have to do something about these questions. May be for now, I will let them linger in my mind

Seven Devils

The second part of the book talks about seven devils, that one might encounter at various points in time. They are

Group Think
- Be cautious about relying on group strength as the primary source of your identity.
- Love-strength begins with you taking your own loves seriously, and being deeply curious about how these loves can be channeled in some helpful or productive way
Excellence Curse
- Where there’s no love, the activity is a weakness - even if you excel at it
- Strength is any activity that strengthens you.
- Your strengths are the activities where you feel signs of love
- Weakness is any activity that weakens you, even if you amazing at it
- Don’t assume that your strengths are the activities that you excel in. You might excel in doing something that you do not love.
Mis-instinct
- Pay attention only to the specific activities you love, not the outcomes of those activities. Pay attention to that you are going to be doing, rather than why.
- When deciding between two jobs, always think about the actual work that you will do, and put aside stuff like money, prestige, power etc. as the latter are not the necessary elements that will make you get up in the morning and look forward to work with love, on a sustainable basis
- If you find yourself instinctively yearning to “get in to a room”, make sure you learn as much as you can about whether you love the activities “in the room where it happens”.
Feedbacking
- Understand the difference between feedback and response. Feedback is given based on your performance. Nobody tries to look in to the activity or sub-activities that went in to creating the performance. You might love all the activities. Other’s feedback is compromised by the fact that they aren’t you and so are incapable of knowing which action or technique will help you - not them - do better
- Pay close attention to reaction as it is a much humbler gift
Fear Fighting
- It is easy to run from fears but the real path to discovering love is to face fears head on
Rate-Me-Rank-Me
- There are many systems around us that compare us to others. It would take you years before you can take the comparison in a positive light and strive towards a better version of you, with out casting a jealous eye on the others who are better than you or cast a condescending look on those who are worse than you
- It is easy to let the comparisons get in the way of our loves. Sometimes you might forget the fact the “what” behind the activity you are doing and let the “outcome” of the activity control your behavior.
- Ways to shield from this devil
  - Hold on tight to your own red threads
  - Be careful whom you choose to surround yourself with
  - Keep your eyes focused only on contribution
Suckitup
- Virtually any job is awful and soul-destroying if it is being done by a person who doesn’t find love in it.
- In any job, sustained excellence without love is impossible
- Love isn’t a luxury, it is a necessity
- Love lives in motion, not in balance
- Loves are not a luxury, reserved for the precious few. Loves, expressed are a necessity for us all. Stifle them, deny them, block their flow, and they will destroy you from the inside out

Make Love + Work Come Alive

The third part of the book touches upon various facets of our lives where the framework of love+work can provide better ways to understand and live. The author touches upon marriage/relationships, parenting, education systems and work. Out of the all the chapters in this part, I liked the chapter on parenting as well the one that relates to career.

Love + Work Career

A healthy career is also in motion. It is a constant work in progress, always in a state of becoming. Just when you think you’ve found the perfect job, life moves on, and you find you need to start over - a new team, a new company, a new career.
How do you know if you’ve started out right ? You don’t. Just start. A career is not a ladder not a lattice, nor a jungle gym. A career is a scavenger hunt for love
Be generous with yourself. Don’t look for a sign to the perfect opening. Don’t wait until all the paths have been cut and freed from thick undergrowth and fallen trees. Just start moving. Listen to your instincts, try to find a role in which you might catch a glimpse of a red thread or two, them, as you move down the path, keep your eyes peeled for more red threads
Most successful people found roles that
- fulfilled their sense of purpose - they believed in the “why” of the role
- allied them with colleagues they trusted and admired - they connected to the “who” of the role
- contained activities they loved - they enjoyed the role’s “what”
- Getting to do something that you love that is in the intersection of why, what and who, is something you need to strive for.
- The “what” is the most significant of the triad - why, what and who. Focus on “what” and then over a period of time, the “why” and “who” might fall in place.
In study after study, those people who reported that they had a chance to do something they loved each and every day were far more likely to be high performers and to stay in the role than those who reported that they believed in the mission of the company or liked their teammates. It’s not that those other two things are unimportant; it’s just that what you are actually being paid to do is more important
Before you take up a job, discipline yourself to investigate exactly what sort of activities will be filling your working week.
when you want to investigate “what” behind an activity, details matter
When it comes to love, extreme frequency trumps extreme intensity. So discipline yourself to devote a little attention at the beginning of each day to pick out your loves for the day
Pay attention to the red threads you’re going to find at work today and you will get from them what you need. Every day
Successful people take a generic job description given to them of the role, and they deliberately and gradually fashion the job so that it focused more and more on the activities they loved to.
Change follows the focus of your attention, particularly when you are attentive to what you love
Strive to be different, not complete
- Learn how to make best use of red threads. The red threads are the source of your energy, your learning and your comparative advantage. You will never be complete. Instead, you will always and forever be weaving these threads into some sort of differentiated contribution
- Become comfortable with describing those threads which are not red. Learn to differentiate, honestly and vividly, between your reds and all the other shades
Shape your career like an hourglass
- Start moving in the first part of your career. Try to find threads that interest you,excite you. Try to find the red threads
- Middle part of the career is a long stint involving practicing craft
- The top of the hourglass involves using your mastery over a field as a foundation to lead others
“There is no I in team” misses the mark. The entire point of a team is to capitalize on each “I”. I’s coordinated, are what a team is. Teams are the perfect place for you to both celebrate and contribute your unique loves
The sole purpose of schools and universities has become “sorting” rather than making students learn about their individual loves and spend time nurturing them

The takeaway from this part of the book resonates with many ideas that I have come across in several books. I guess one thing distinct about the author’s tone is the emphasis on “what”. Sometimes we are too obsessed with “Why” and never seem to be paying attention the red threads that might be useful to explore and investigate. Well, it is great if you already know a “WHY” but not everyone has a clarity on “WHY” unless they try out many things in life.

I have always looked for activities in any mundane job and weaved my own loves in to it. Agreed that not all types of activities in my professional work have a 100% intersection with my loves. But by articulating the loves and differentiating the red threads from the rest, I have been able to find a reasonable working life so far. However I have reached a point in my life where I have been weaving the red threads in to a fabric and creating many specific pieces of clothes; there doesn’t seem to be any overarching “WHY” behind these pieces of work that I am doing. Does it matter ? May be ? May be not. I do not know. If I think about Cosmic insignificance theory from Oliver Burkeman’s four thousand hours, may be as long as I enjoy the current process, I should stick to it. At the same time, I think that I am getting too comfortable in my line of work and consequently not setting up my life for any asymmetric payoff. Should one even care about asymmetric payoffs ? These are the questions that I will carry in my mind and not immediately seek for specific answers. May be the answers will come to me, if I let the questions linger in my mind for quite a while.

Parenting

I loved the section on parenting in which the author narrates the way his parents treated his stuttering problem. By allowing the child to make choices, have agency in their life from a very young age, the child is in a good shape to learn. Instead of allowing the child to make choices, most of the parents try to have joystick approach, a metaphor for controlling children’s lives. They make sure that they are not hurt, that don’t tread in a direction that parents think is undesirable etc. This joystick approach to parenting is harmful for the child as it never provides him an understanding that the world is inherently uncertain and one can never predict the consequences completely. The fact the author’s parents never reached out to school authorities to dissuade them for making their stuttering son speak in the chapel, was the best thing that happened to author. In the love space created by parents, the author could figure out a way to come out of stammering.

There is a a wonderful poem by Kahlil Gibran, mentioned in this book:

Your children are not your children.

They are sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with

His might that His arrows may go swift and far,

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He also loves the bow that is stable

The author reflects on something very important that I hope to remember it forever, while I raise my two little daughters

Such was the strength of their love for me. They put their own fears aside, and allowed me all the space I needed to act, to choose, to learn and to strengthen my agency in the world. I was the beneficiary of two parents who had long ago released the joystick and realized that choice - my choice - is the fuel of learning.

Takeaways

I found the book an enjoyable read as it delves in to a topic that most of us seek out in our lives in some form or the other. I think the analogies in the book are something that will stick with me - red threads in our lives, career as hour glass, seven devils that one might encounter. Out of all the aspects that are mentioned in the book, one thing stood out - the emphasis on the notion that Love is for Work and Work is for Love. We always seem to be told that successful people love their work but how does on find the love ? The answer lies in work. Work and love feed each other and this key idea resonates in many shades across the book. Also the “Red thread questionnaire” serves as a great set of prompts when you reflect on your life and work on a regular basis

Love + Work - Book Review

Contents